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Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#391

Post by ellis0n »

ptmcc wrote: post #98

To some extent, yes. Most notably, I published a little browser extension I created to scratch a personal itch. It got a little bit of attention and users, and then the feature requests started coming. Among a couple reasonable ideas were big demands like make it work on different platforms, make it integrate with other sites, or make it work entirely differently. And unhelpful bug reports that often didn't even make…

If we lived in a perfect world, how much in funds would you want for your contribution to open source? (a companies or 3rd party players)

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#392

Post by Lerc »

blibble wrote: post #127

I regret everything I ever open sourced my works had one condition: attribution now it's all been slopped up by "AI", without attribution, primarily to devalue the labour of software developers

I think it is generally accepted that AI should not reproduce works that others have the right to. I think most people developing AI consider it a mode of failure when it does reproduce a copy of its training data.

It remains an open question on who's responsibility it is to not distribute infringing AI works. The developer or the the user of the AI. Legally it is unclear due to a lack of cases providing precedent in such a new situation. Morally I think AI developers do consider it a duty to reduce such behaviour to a minimum, but also believe that the benefits of the AI are significant enough that it would be unreasonable to block access to them because of the existence of failure modes.

When it comes to being "slopped up" which is a weird phrasing in itself, but I gather you are trying to repurpose the term "slop" to add additional pejorative tone to you words. I'm not really a fan of 'slop' as a term for AI output because it is used specifically as a term for AI output. Should it be used as a blanket term for low effort, mass generated content it would be reasonable, but when it seems to apply specifically to AI it carries the implication of prejudice. Choosing to move it to a verb describing input removes all of the meaningful aspect of the term leaving only the prejudice. Just go with "slurped up"

That brings us to what training actually is, Reading. There is no requirement for attribution to read something. There is no requirement for attribution to learn from something. The restrictions on reproduction are there in recognition of your work representing the ideas. The ideas themselves are not copyrightable, This is widely recognised legally and morally. Scholars have written volumes on why this should be the case and how bad it would be if the alternative, a world where people could own ideas themselves, were true. Imagine the wealth imbalance that exist in today's world, now extend that imbalance from money to the very ideas that you use to express yourself.

AI should not reproduce your work by terms you have not agreed to. You have a valid complaint when it does that. My concern is that people appear to be extending their claims to suggest that they control the right to be learned from. That is not true, right, or moral.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#395

Post by jgerrish »

I have two groups of things I've put online that I think I'll regret short term but not long-term.

They're both about understanding of statistics at their heart. But in vastly different ways.

The first is my first set of amateur Rust projects. They're built around a Covid-Era project to reverse engineer the LucasArts SCUMM games, specifically Loom on the Atari ST. It was a fun project that led me through Atari STX disks to FAT file systems to SCUMM virtual machines.

And a few side projects along the way with CRC32, Adler-32, Fletcher and flawed checksum algorithms. Including using a kolmogorov-smirnov test to show issues with Adler32 on small data sizes.

I use the math, and it's a great project to learn about hypothesis testing and polynomials. But I can't explain it all. Just enough to be dangerous.

And the APIs are shit.

But it's out there and it was fun.

The second isn't really code. It's a comment somewhere about Microsoft and Valve and purposefully designing systems like UEFI for political purposes before the "What the fuck is an SBAT and why does everyone suddenly care" issue struck.

It was about how these large-scale global political and standards wars hurt normal developers, even if in the end they will help others.

But I mentioned dead eyes because I was talking about exhaustion and just going along with trends instead of fighting back.

My comment might have been construed as violence against women. It wasn't in any way. As I go through CT and fMRI tests into the future we can show that it's not always what it seems on the surface.

But it is my fault. It was a stupid mistake that wasnt thinking about imagery in a larger context. Statistics shoes violence against women is a bigger issue, and that's the truth.

So, I'm sorry.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#396

Post by neilv »

oreally wrote: post #189
neilv wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scenario is someone in a work environment, lying and defrauding in signed documents. Where does the workplace dishonesty start and end? Does the person think that their colleagues have the same rules, or different rules? How does that affect their work environment? (Incidentally, I'm sick of HN downvoting legitimate comments.)

It starts when companies decide they have a right to time outside the employee's official hours and that they shouldn't have to properly reflect it in their employees' salaries, nor in their employment guarantees. And furthermore, as an employee end of the day it's your right to have to be look out for yourself. You probably don't realize that because you're infected with startupitis where everyone has to be all in t…

I do realize that employees have to look out for themselves (because companies, including startups, will usually take, take take from the employee, and then throw away the carcass, if they can).

However, employees work in a company with other people, so we'd like to know what we can and can't trust from each other.

If a colleague engages in criminal fraud, do they have a rigorous philosophy about when and when not to do that? How do they behave towards the team? Is defrauding the company OK, over something they think they company shouldn't demand anyway, but they will still be honest and responsible towards their teammates? That would be very good to know.

If so many people weren't so anxious to downvote things that don't suit their kneejerk reactions, we could discuss this.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#397

Post by bitbasher »

neilv wrote: post #396
oreally wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It starts when companies decide they have a right to time outside the employee's official hours and that they shouldn't have to properly reflect it in their employees' salaries, nor in their employment guarantees. And furthermore, as an employee end of the day it's your right to have to be look out for yourself. You probably don't realize that because you're infected with startupitis where everyone has to be all in t…

I do realize that employees have to look out for themselves (because companies, including startups, will usually take, take take from the employee, and then throw away the carcass, if they can). However, employees work in a company with other people, so we'd like to know what we can and can't trust from each other. If a colleague engages in criminal fraud, do they have a rigorous philosophy about when and when not to…

Yikes. I'm a fraudster now.

How do you feel about torrenting?

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#398

Post by pmarreck »

bravesoul2 wrote: post #154
arjvik wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you apply through the website/job posting? I’d strongly recommend trying again and reaching out to the friend of a friend who informed you of the role and asking for a more direct intro to the hiring manager. Unfortunately, it’s really really easy to slip through the cracks as a resume, and one feels no remorse rejecting a pdf file. Even without the warm contact, some way of directly reaching the hiring manager (…

Anthropic has a tough alignment interview. Like I aced the coding screener but got rejected after a chat about values. I think they want intense people on the value/safety side as well as the chops.

So much for diversity (at least in thought) hiring, I guess

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#399

Post by dotancohen »

KronisLV wrote: post #318
kellpossible2 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's to stop them from Recreate this library so that I can use it in my project without fear of copyright violation. in their very own claude code?

For small enough codebases, that seems like an inevitable reality, eventually. If you have nearly limitless compute to throw at an issue and a good enough model, then it should be able to create enough test cases to cover most aspects of the codebase (iterating thousands of times until it gets it right) and then eventually write a new implementation in a new language or a slightly different tech stack that passes all…

It might even be a boon for security that many organizations have independent implementations of core code projects, even possibly the OS. In such a hypothetical world, security issues that are implementation dependent would not affect such large swaths of the installed software.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#400

Post by jart »

yladiz wrote: post #378
jart wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world's most successful open source developer didn't converge on that communication style for no reason. I don't think I've seen a single person bring up the classism inherent in dictating gentlemanly manners. Part of what made open source unique is that people from all classes could participate, and working class people are not tuned to pick up on subtle communication the way the upper classes have been. Linus l…

This is a weird take. It’s not classist to filter your communication to not call people morons even if you think they are, it shows you have respect for them. You don’t need to be “elite” to find some of the things he said offensive.

Open source doesn't have any kind of filter for participation, like a stringent hiring process, or requirement of academic achievement, which makes them entitled to respect. A lot of people show up who are unqualified, schizo, etc. It's demoralizing if a project treats those people and puts them on the same level as your best guys. Keep in mind, open source has no titles, no job levels, and no salary. So respect is the only thing people can hope to earn by participating, therefore it's totally ridiculous to give that out for free, because then people have nothing to gain and nothing to look forward to earning. These days the solution to this conundrum is to just ban everyone who isn't employed by a big tech company and shut down the comments section. However open source grew up in the 90's / 2000's culture that highly valued free speech and open participation. If you have to take the omegas in, like Linux did, then they have to play the omega role. This is better in some ways, because omegas are still part of the group, and still cared for, and many of them improve and grow past that role.
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